then after he got out of that one he starts talking about benghazi and all this other stuff and lost that one argument. could he have won if he said, i'm the guy you need for this job. >> part, you need to go back and show why the policies were going to work. for example, if you take a look at 2003 bush tax cuts, by 2007, $800 billion more revenue had come in and the deficit was cut from $370 billion to $260 billion. did you hear him say that? that's what he needed to do, full-throated defense of republican policies that bush implemented but also he could have used to show why his policies would work. ultimately when you make it a referendum, you take the arguments off the table. >> do you buy that he should have defended all the republican policies of bush and his own? >> no, because those policies got us in trouble in 2008 in a great many ways. bush inherited a surplus and left with a massive deficit. didn't monitor the financial system and so on. the mostç important point is david's right about, which is there's no such thing as a presidential referendum election. i've covered t